Chapter 1 - Of Fires and Fillies
Ponyville General Hospital is ablaze.
Not just burning, mind you, but freaking ablaze. I don't know what happened, but somehow it's spewing dark smoke into the sky, orange flames lapping hungrily at the once proud structure. I could probably give a better description of such a haunting sight, but I'd rather not. That place, despite the fact I had loathed the fact it was required to be, had been my home for the past couple months. Someplace I had felt safe and secure after getting over my initial shock and angst due to being physically ripped from the last place I had called home.
And now it was up in flames. Literally.
"I... Just… How?" I stutter to nobody in particular, trying to find the words to describe just how I feel about this sudden development, eventually giving up on the pursuit to just stagger up the hill towards the place. A million questions buzz through my brain, the organ woking furiously to try and process what's happening, or why it’s happening, rather. It's so focused on this task, I'm so focused on the loss of my little haven, that I fail to notice the crowd that's gathered around the building. Until I nearly run over a mother who hugging her filly as close as possible, thankful that her little baby was safe and sound, that is. Then, after I murmur an apology that I doubt she even heard and back away to give them some space I find myself staring at the ponies around me. What I see everywhere I look I see more of the same thing: a happy ending.
Miraculous as it seems, I don’t see any ponies mourning the loss of someone they loved. I don’t see any children crying for their mothers or parents desperately looking around for their foals. Heck, it doesn’t even look like anyone had gotten hurt too bad. Sure, there were burns here and there, but those were easily treated and more were of an inconvenience than anything. Kinda like the fact that the building had been lit on fire, apparently. Either I had shown up after everything had resolved itself, or things like hospitals burning was something common in Ponyville. It actually looked like I was the only one that was sti- Wait, nevermind. Over there's the medical staff, standing together with misty eyes as they watch their workplace burn away. Still, all things considered, this wasn't near as bad as it could've been. Realizing this now, I make my way over to the small gathering of nurses and doctors as they're the only folks among the crowd that I recognize.
One of the nurses exclaim as I draw nearer, trotting over with a worried look,
Nurse Everbright responds, somehow already beside me.
I just stayed silent during this exchange, tuning out their voices after the first few lines because, quite frankly, it'd be a waste of my time: I still can’t understand a lick of Equestrian. So, rather than use it to hopelessly guess at what they’re talking about, I decided to watch the various gathered pegasi with mild interest. Turns out in this world of magic and whatnot, the most effective way to fight a fire seems to be just dumping a whole bunch of angry rainclouds over the place in question. What makes this intresting is the fact that pegasi can seem to do this with near pinpoint accuracy: It doesn’t look like rain extends more than a few yards in either direction beyond the blaze, and that’s probably just to keep it from spreading.
"Ginger!" I'm snapped out of my pega-pony watching, however, when I hear Lyra calling my name. I look down to see her trotting over and let a small smile grace my lips.
"Oh good, you're okay too. More happy endings."
Mild sarcasm aside, she smiles back at me, "Yeah, like there's any alternative around here?"
"Eh?" I raise my eyebrow at this, "You serious about that?"
"No," She sticks her tongue out at me, "But most of the time things wind up working out anyway."
"Yeah..." I look back at the building, shoulders sagging a bit, "So it seems."
Lyra instantly picks up on this, well versed in what saggy shoulders means with me, "You okay?"
"I'll be fine," I sigh, "Just a building..."
"Damn straight," She agrees, bumping my side with hers, "It's not like that was your house or anything." When I neglect to respond to this, she bumps me again a little more forcefully, "Buck up, manly-man. You should be thankful that place isn't an option anymore anyway."
I look over at her, mildly irritated at her apparent disregard for my stinging emotions. "That so?" I grunt.
"Of course it is, now you can room wi-"
A purply colored mare with a pink mane dashes over, interrupting our conversation with a frantic look in her eye,
Lyra's attention is quickly stolen by the newcomer and whatever her problem is, so I'm forced to wait for the two to work out the issue before I can hear the rest of what she was going to say.
The purple mare begins to explain, all of which I tune out because I can't understand a syllable of it. Quietly sighing in mild annoyance I take a step back so they can have a bit of privacy, I turn my attention back to the building because I figure that'd be more polite than attempting to listen in. The place is still burning violently, and I still feel broken up about it. I'm about to resign myself to a fate of idly meandering about until I can think of something productive to do when I realize something:
"Where's Screwy?"
I look down to my side, half-expecting that doggy of a mare to be there, panting happily despite the fact that we're now homeless.
She's not.
My eyes widen when I realize this and I quickly scan the mass of ponies scattered about. No yipping, yapping bundle of joy to be seen. Starting to panic now, I cup my hands around my mouth.
"Screwloose!" I bellow, deepening my voice so both that and the foreign tongue make it stand out from the rest. Obviously this draws the gaze of more than a few of the gathered equines, most of them taking note of their otherworldly visitor for the first time. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to get her attention, and that's all I care about at the moment. Fearing the worst I try again, drawing the fancy of more pony eyes. Still no Screwy.
By this point Lyra's noted my distress and is quickly trotting over to ask what's wrong, but before she can get a word out I happen to hear an overly loud pained yelp that sounds just like that mare I've come to know and love. Without thinking another thought I dash off in that direction, only taking note of my destination after I'm halfway there: the doomed husk of Ponyville General.
And I don't give a flying fuck.
The only thing that matters to me right now is finding her and getting her to safety, no matter if I have to throw myself in harm’s way to do it. If you told me three months ago that I’d be risking my life to safe some crazy pastel-blue pony that thought she was a dog, you’d probably find yourself receiving the most unbelieving of looks I could possibly muster… But this is now. Now that same crazy pastel-blue pony is one of the only three people on the face of this planet that I trust completely and utterly, and I’m not about to let her go up in flames with the hospital.
I’m already halfway to the building before anybody other than Lyra makes any more to stop me, and by then it’s too late. Thankfully the aforementioned minty unicorn seems to have forgotten she could probably just use magic to scoop me up and float me away, and living with a candymaker for a roommate hasn’t done anything for physique. So it’s with relative ease I’m able to keep ahead of her, burst through to door of the burning structure and skid to a stop halfway down the hallway.
The first thing I notice when calm down enough to take stock of my surroundings is it’s actually quite hot in here. Probably should’ve expected that, the place is kinda violently on fire and all. The second? That I’m extremely lucky this place was built with an excessively high ceiling on every floor, as if it were any lower I’d probably be unable to see anything due to the smoke that was currently just stinging my eyes. The third? That I’d probably be best served by getting the fuck out of there. Despite the roar of the flames I can still hear the building’s loud protests, probably indicating that it’s due to collapse at any given minute.
“Screwloose!” I shout again in spite of the smoke that fills my lungs as soon as breathe in, as the sooner I find her the sooner the both of us can get out. Her reply is that of a muffled bark from a floor or two up, by the sounds of it, and I’m left wondering for a moment how I was ever able to hear her over everything while I was outside of all this noise.
Thankfully I don’t spare the thought another second and just head for where I know the staircase to be to charge straight up them with no regard for just how weakened by the fire they may be and try again on the next level. Again, her reply seems to be from some floor above me, so the process repeats itself. Twice more, actually: Turns out she was on the fourth and topmost floor for reasons I simply can’t comprehend, and don’t bother trying to.
The smoke is much thicker up here, making breathing and even seeing a difficult task, and every step I make I can feel the floorboards shift beneath my feet, but I’m too close to back down now. Luckily it doesn’t take long at all to find her, not with that call and response system that we had wordlessly settled on using earlier, though my relief is short lived when I come to realize she’s pinned by what must have been a roof support that came through the broken ceiling above her. That would explain why she didn’t meet me halfway, I suppose, though at this point there shouldn’t have been any doubt that something was keeping her from moving around in here.
As I approach, however, I quickly realize that there happens to be a bit more to it than that: She’s not just pinned under that oversize two-by-four, she’s actually using her body to try and keep it from crushing a pair of unconscious fillies. Not only that, but despite her best efforts it also seems to have pinned them underneath her as well as her underneath it. Throw in the fact that the floor is practically screaming that it plans on giving away any second now, and I find myself wishing that I had shown up a minute or so sooner.
Still, there’s nothing I can do about that now, so I do the only thing I can do to help: find a place on that beam holding them down and lift as hard as I can. Unfortunately the smoke both in the room and my lungs makes it much harder than it should be for such a relatively simple task, but I manage. I have to manage. To not manage would spell the deaths of all four of us, and that’d be unacceptable, right?
Right..?
Good lord, this thing weighs a ton…
Puffing with exertion and doing my damndest not to cough and drop it, the stubborn slab of wood eventually begins to rise enough for Screwy to limp out from under. As soon as she’s free she turns around and quickly tosses the pair of passed out ponies onto her back and makes for the door. And yes, she literally tossed them into the smoke-filled air with her mouth and caught them on her back with perfect balance, despite everything else that’s going on. Don’t ask me how, she’s a magical blue dog-pony: logic is invalid.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the giant-ass wooden beam that I promptly let go of as soon as everybody’s clear, nor the unstable floor that it crashes down into. Or myself, so gravity quickly attempts to claim me as my stupid move breaks a gaping hole into the floor of the room. I barely manage to get my arms and upper chest onto the non-falling part of the floor as soon as I realize what my stunt just did, but it just so happens that it slows me enough so Screwloose can return the favor and save me from myself. Specifically by darting forward and grabbing my shirt in her jaw and refusing to let go until I manage to clamber back up to her level.
After giving her a full body hug in thanks and thinking the same thing to whatever deity that’s kept us both alive this far, make for the staircase, hoping that our luck holds long enough for us to get out without any other unnecessary hassle. Too bad my reckless charge up here kinda broke the stairs from the third floor down, eh? Also kinda sucks that that’s the only staircase in the building, but hey, at least we were a little closer to the ground, right?
Thinking about as fast as a panicked young man half-delirious from smoke inhalation can, I remember that this place was built with windows! Huzzah! So the first thing I do afterwards is throw a chair out the nearest one and roll my zip-up hoodie-thing around one of my arms so I can knock out the rest of the glass. By the time I’m finished with that a few pegasi have gathered around the window, probably having noticed the projectile chair burst out and decided to investigate.
Under normal circumstances, I’d probably be geeking out a little bit: due to their ability to both fly and manipulate the weather they’re kinda my favorite type of pony, just ask Lyra. Poor mare just doesn’t understand that spontaneous tornado generation beats levitation any day, at least in the mind of a man-child such as myself anyway.
Still, these aren’t normal circumstances, so the first thing I do after nearly hacking out a lung into the fresh air is scoop the fillies off of Screwloose’s back and hand them over to the nearest pegasi with agonizing slowness, wanting to be sure that the poor things are securely in their grip before relinquishing them. Curious to note, the pair that I intrust them to happen to be wearing matching form fitting suits. Seriously, its almost like they’re wearing spandex or something. I don’t have time to dwell on that, however: the hospital decides that right about then would be a good time to groan and shift ominously.
I’m proud to say that my immedate reaction is to get Screwloose out of there as fast as I possibly can. That having been said, my method probably could be a bit more tactful: I don’t think she really apreaceated me suddenly snatching her from the floor only to leap out of the window in a manner that ensures that she’ll land atop me. Not because it probably saved our lives, but because it was such a fast happening that I only realize what I did after its already been done. I really hope I didn’t give her whiplash…
…
I… may need to sort out my priorities: falling back-first three stories should concern me more than weather or not my actions prior was uncomfortable for the mare I was trying to save. I’m pretty sure that’s borderline unhealthy or something.
Eh?
Oh, right! Pegasi!
Turns out I don’t really need to worry about breaking any ribs again on impact after all. Though it’s beyond me how they were able to react in time, especially considering I hadn’t been able to keep up with my own actions (and I was the one who made them, for christ’s sake!), a few of the ponies that had been paying more attention or were just plain old fast enough manage to get their hooves underneath me before I quite made it halfway to the ground. Once there, however…
Well, one of them decides to scold me for my quick thinking. She seems to be an older mare compared to some of the others I’ve seen around, so I suppose that’s why her tone comes off kinda like that of an annoyed older aunt or cousin or something. Maybe even a mother, but not old enough to be grandparent material, thats for sure. That’s all I’m able to really learn from her rant anyway, or what would’ve been a rant if I wasn’t annoyed enough to actually grab ahold of muzzle golden and keep it from opening so I could make a couple of very valid points.
“One, I can’t understand a single word of what you’re saying, mam,” I speak a little slower than normal to help that fact sink in. I’m not sure if it does, she still seems kinda hung up on the fact that I had the balls to clamp her mouth shut, but those goggles of hers makes it impossible to tell. “Two-”
*insert sounds spontaneous building collapse here*
By the time I’m done staggering away from the wreckage and the huge amounts of dust, debris and ash that total structural failure kicked up settles, I’m pretty sure that my point was made for me.
“Yeah, that.”